


There Won't Be Trumpets

by alphahelices



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:08:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25052197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphahelices/pseuds/alphahelices
Summary: While so much of his existence has been surrounded by explosions and gunfire and shouting, Kaidan’s life has been shaped by the silences in between.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard, Kaidan Alenko/Shepard
Comments: 70
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

It has always been loud.

The headaches start first, not long after the implant, and the pain is accompanied by a roaring in his ears like his own skull shattering over and over again. He spends hours with his head stuffed under blankets and pillows, feeling the ache, listening to the roar, and waiting for it to pass. When the headaches aren’t raging there is the adolescent clamor of Jump Zero. Every day bursts with shouts and snide comments and the hum and rattle of his own biotics in his bones. There is the percussion of shattered crates and toppled targets, the restless pounding of his own heart.

When the day comes that he can finally leave brain camp, the engines of the transport ship are like thunder. The launch is a crescendo rising beneath him, the bass rumble of bellowing turbines, roaring away from Jump Zero toward whatever comes next.

* * *

When he joins the alliance, there is a ceremony in a docking bay before the recruits are sent off earth to the alliance bases. The pomp of the moment is distilled into a quartet playing alliance songs. A line of recruits are waving goodbye to their earthbound families; Kaidan is at the end. His father and mother are watching from the tiny assembled crowd. Their mouths are tight lines, holding back some emotion he can’t fathom. The quartet sounds tinny and garish in the gaping cavern of the docking bay, and still he is grateful for the noise so that he doesn’t have to think of something to say as he leaves.

He works his way through the ranks, sent from mission to mission and joining crew after crew. There are ten more years in his bones and the word _lieutenant_ in front of his name when alliance orders send him to join the crew of the SSV Normandy. Earth wasn’t his home and certainly Jump Zero was not either, but in time he finds that comforting mundanity on the decks of the Normandy. The muted chatter of the crew and the drone of the ship’s processes is welcoming, even when the headaches come raging. He finds easy friends in the crew, years and lifetimes from the awkwardness and hostility of the other kids on Jump Zero.

Then there is Shepard. She hums in the drop shuttle after missions. The way she smiles at him makes him spill his worst-kept secrets. He is an endless eruption of confessions and uninvited commentary and things he shouldn’t have said, should not have said, _why did I say that_ , and then when he finally shuts up he notices that she has been silent the whole time.

The silence hangs in the room, clear as an unrung bell. And he realizes she has been listening, intently, and is thinking hard about her own response.

She asks questions, gently about the tender subjects or teasing a little when she knows he can bear it. Her voice is soft even over the hum of the engines. She learns about him in chapters. In moments where his guard is down. In the times when his voice cracks or his biotic powers fail him or he’s just staring at the stars, feeling homesick for a home he barely remembers. She finds him, and he talks, and she listens.

It is a counterpoint to the moments when the world is exploding around them in gunshots and geth, her voice barking down the comm lines with orders. But she is a good commander, the kind he hopes to be someday, and he follows her curt commands and somehow they make it through alive, each battlefield a new miracle. They leave each world in their drop ship for the Normandy, and she hums as the ship shakes through the atmosphere, an absentminded melody.

* * *

He tells her about the headaches (another secret, abandoned). After the next trip to the citadel she is back with new supplies for the med bay, armfuls of compresses and pain medication. The next time he finds himself seeking relief, Dr. Chakwas has a new assortment of files on treating pain from L2 implants, and he doesn’t have to ask to know that Shepard found them.

It’s not a cure, but some of the therapies Chakwas proposes actually manage to mute the pain. There are longer stretches between the times when his head is ready to split open. Of course Shepard never takes credit, which is just as well, because he wouldn’t even begin to know how to thank her.

When the headaches come, however rare, he finds himself trying to imagine the weak and idle strains of Shepard’s humming in the drop shuttle. That feeling of earned exhaustion after a hard mission, accompanied by the relief of another success. The consoling sense of going home at the end of a long day, the Normandy waiting patiently in near orbit. The thin and artless voice of his commander beside him, comforting in its plainness.

* * *

After, she asks him what he thinks of their last mission, her last choice, her last command. What they should have done and what they should do next. Every time she finds him in the depths of the Normandy and wants to know his thoughts. He tells her, his own voice gentle against the harsh whirr of the engine room. Sometimes he agrees with her choices, and she listens and thanks him and leaves. And sometimes he disagrees with her, an action or reaction that wasn’t enough or was too much, and even then she listens.

And then there’s the time she could’ve said the right thing and _didn’t_ and Ashley loses her mind and raises her gun and Wrex dies on the beach at Virmire, sand and gunsmoke in the air. By the end of the day Ashley is dead and Kaidan is not and Virmire is nothing but ash suspended in space, and even then what sticks in Kaidan’s mind is the silence of Shepard’s hesitation before it was broken so harshly as Ashley’s bullet split the air. He tells her without reservation that her actions could’ve stopped it, when she visits him the next day in the lower decks of the Normandy, and she listens and is silent for a moment.

_I know,_ she says, and the engines are so loud and the thermal systems of the ship are rattling again and upstairs some of the engineers are welding new panels onto the walls, but her voice is a fragile thing and so quiet. He has no response.

Then she says _what do you think I should do next time_ , and that he has an answer for. He tells her and she listens and they argue, a little, and maybe he riles her up just to hear a little more fire in her voice. But still they settle on a plan for next time, if there ever is another heated moment where every action counts.

The conversation fades to silence. Maybe it’s the unspoken question between them in the aftermath of Virmire ( _why is he the one to survive)_ or the tenderness of the air bruised so freshly by their raised voices, but this silence, here with the two of them in the dim lower decks, feels like the makings of a scandal. It feels like something new.

* * *

He does not hear the fragility in her voice again, not even the night before Ilos. He goes to her and she is maybe a little unhinged, here on their stolen warship, but still there is confidence in her voice. Confidence and something else. She says words he has waited a long time to hear, reminds him there are no rules anymore.

There are no rules anymore and she stares at him in silence, her hand on his forearm. He meets her eyes and even this time—god, even _this time_ —he has to stop and ask her what she means (he knows what she means) and if she’s sure (her voice is steady) and then her mouth is on his. The silence of the room is gone, his heartbeat is in his skull and the sound of her panting breaths in his ears, against his neck, beneath him, her voice heavy—oh Kaidan, oh _Kaidan—_ and the whole universe is a loud and violent thing trapped here in this moment with just them, and for once he is living for the volume of it.

* * *

The morning is silent, something fresh and untouched. They don’t speak, just fumble closer together in the tangle of sheets, half-asleep with eyes still closed. Heads on the same pillow, their foreheads pressed together. Joker’s voice comes like a knife through the blank and open canvas of the dawn, and then they are dressing for Ilos. The silence slips away into the clatter of armor plates, thermal clips clicking into place, and heavy boots clambering toward the drop shuttle.

* * *

After the battle of the citadel, the endless percussion of explosions and gunfire and falling bodies, something breaks the glass.

They’ll tell him after that it was part of Sovereign, crumpling in defeat and crashing through the presidium tower. But in the moment it is nothing but light reflecting in a thousand directions from every speck of falling glass. He can swear he hears the sound, that cinema-perfect tinkling of shattered windows, like fingertips on wine glasses.

When he wakes, later, with blood on his face and in his mouth, he thinks for a second he can still hear that chiming sound of the world shattering around him. Then he realizes it is only a ringing in his ears. He can hear nothing else, even as his crewmates pull him from the wreckage, shouting his name and Shepard’s and a million other words he can’t read on their lips.

He sees Shepard then, staggering from her own pile of rubble, and she looks as beaten and broken as he feels. Anderson is shouting at her. Kaidan sees his jaw moving, and he sees Shepard staring wildly at Anderson’s lips and knows that she is also trapped in an ear-ringing deafness.

And then Shepard looks around, sees her whole crew alive, and at last her eyes fix on Kaidan, and he sees the relief wash over her as she smiles and breaks into laughter—

And he is laughing too, this joy in the moment of both of them alive—

And neither of them can hear it over the ringing of their own ears. This silent triumph.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s fanfare after. They sweep away the broken glass and littered bodies and spent bullets. The vid channels sing Shepard’s praises. There are trumpets and horns and singing in the streets, like the reaper threat is over, like it’s done. People are shouting _we won_ in the citadel bars. Kaidan’s mother calls him and she says _honey I saw you on the news_ and she calls him _my hero_.

There is fanfare, but there are still reapers. Even asleep in Shepard’s arms in the days after the battle for the citadel he sees the reapers waiting, behind his eyelids, in his dreams. Shepard tells the council _they are still out there_ but the council does not listen and instead the Normandy is sent to hunt down geth.

In these days, Kaidan spends more time listening than Shepard does. She rails against the council in the lower decks of the Normandy—the upper decks, too—and rants about threats ignored while the council pretends at peace. Kaidan listens while she paces and mumbles (or on the good days, the fun days, while she yells and curses) and sometimes he butts in to say things like _is that what you would say to Udina?_ And then she laughs, a toneless huff of air, and says _no, that piece of shit, what I would say to Udina is_ and off she goes, exasperated all the further, voicing her own anger and that of every single member of the Normandy crew.

It keeps them going, while they respond to reports of geth that often aren’t even there. Anger is motivation, these days. Because even if all they do is hunt geth for the next five or ten or twenty years, eventually the reapers are coming back, and life in this galaxy will need the Normandy.

And maybe Shepard will say _I told you so._ Maybe she will say _I told you so, Udina, you piece of shit._ But then she will take down the reapers, or die trying.

So Kaidan riles up Shepard and he stokes the fire of her anger and he waits for the day that she will need to save.

* * *

In between the dead-end missions and the rants on the crew decks, there are more quiet dawns. She smiles at him when she wakes to his half-whispered _good mornings_ , her eyes still shut to the world, her hands over her face to block out the light. She reaches blindly for him, scooting close under the sheets, and the way she sighs when she lays her head on his chest makes him never want to get out of bed.

The evenings are different; she keeps him up late with questions of _are we doing the right thing_ and _how do we change the council’s mind_ and _what should we do next._ Neither of them fall asleep easy with these weights on their minds. Eventually the questions run out and their debates dry up. Then, sometimes, they lay in silence and he listens to her breathing grow deeper and slower until he too drifts into sleep. Other times, she presses against him in the darkness and they move together; not loud or urgent like the night before Ilos but mercifully slow, grasping at this tiny moment of peace between them.

* * *

The day before the collectors attack, Kaidan’s skull shatters.

It’s been ages since he’s had a headache this bad. He is on his way to bed when the buzz of pain starts in his ears, and by midnight he can practically hear his own nerves screaming. Shepard stays up with him all night, silent or speaking in the gentlest whisper, afraid to add to the commotion in his brain. She rubs his back and presses cool wet towels to his forehead and turns the lights down low. When the pain crests, he holds her hand so tightly his fingernails leave marks, but she squeezes back and waits with him for relief. It is very late or very early by the time he finally falls asleep, soaked in sweat.

They don’t get enough sleep before the Normandy is approaching Alchera and they’re called to action, dazed sleepwalkers on a dozing ship. Somehow no one else has slept well either, and the day the collectors attack, everyone is so quiet. Engineers nurse coffee cups on the mess deck. There are murmurs to pass the sugar. The soft _plink_ of toast crumbs hitting the titanium alloy tables. Even Shepard is not angry about today’s new geth scouting mission, distracted by her own lack of sleep.

And then the collector ship appears, a quiet high-pitched _blip_ on the ship radar. Joker’s voice rises in volume and intensity and the radar blips again, persistently; missiles fired. Shepard is shouting now and there are pounding feet on the ship deck, everyone is really moving, the quiet spell of this morning is broken and the ship is on fire. It’s burning now, smoke and alarms and the hiss of emergency sprinklers, and somewhere unseen but insidious is the resolute _whoosh_ of the ship’s oxygen escaping into the vacuum of space.

Shepard is in front of him and she is shouting—last night she spoke to him in whispers softer than anything, but now she is yelling, so loud the comm system is cracking around her syllables, an electronic hoarseness—she is shouting _get to the escape pods_ , and in this moment of panic and chaos he can do nothing more than follow commands. He trusts his commander to do the right thing, now as always, and he takes her orders and he starts directing his friends and crewmates to the escape pods, and he does not doubt that Shepard will be in the pod next to him when all goes quiet again.

The pod is half empty when it launches. But there are others, Kaidan tells himself. He doesn’t even consider for a moment that Shepard is not on one of them. Through the pod window as they jettison away from the collapsing Normandy, Kaidan watches the ship flame and writhe and crumble. He imagines the sound of shrieking metal, even as he watches in the silence of space.

* * *

There are trumpets at Shepard’s funeral.

When Anderson sat down with Kaidan in a back office on the citadel and told him what the searches turned up, it had been as silent as the Normandy collapsing in the void. It was quiet for a long time after, broken only by the rattle of a loose ventilation fan in the ceiling. An artificial sound, here in this wholly organic moment, Anderson at a loss for what to say and Kaidan unable to understand, Anderson saying finally _I’m sorry, lieutenant, I’m sorry_.

Now no one is sorry and there are trumpets and soliloquies about _heroism_ and _humanity’s gratitude_ and some godforsaken symphony is playing earth anthems. There is a coffin draped in flowers but everyone knows—Kaidan knows, and all he can think as he looks around at the crowds is that _everyone must know_ —the coffin is empty, a hollow thing, a vacuum. The military heads and political leaders speak to it like it is Shepard, this void in a box. As if there had been any part of her left to package up neatly.

And they almost seem relieved at having this chapter tucked tidily in a wooden box for good. At being able to embalm and bury the notion that the reapers were ever anything more than a one time threat. But even now all Kaidan can think of is the reapers, coming from distant dark space, always on their way. His anger and his determination to beat them is enough of a distraction to get him through the funeral. Through the trumpets and eulogies and ceremonial nonsense. Through the moment when they launch the empty coffin into space in a modern day burial at sea, proclaiming Shepard gone to rest, out there in the dark.

His mother calls him after. She asks, anxiously, how the funeral went. He tells her _there were trumpets_ , and then he hangs up before his mother can hear him cry.

* * *

They put him on shore leave, indefinitely, after Shepard’s death. He sits in a sparsely furnished, Alliance-issued apartment on the citadel for three and a half weeks. He does not go out and when knocks come at the door he does not answer.

He is alone, the weight of his grief smothering. The white walls. The bare floor. The silence.

Oh God, the silence.

In the silence he can hear everything. The memory of her voice the night before Ilos. The sound of his name in her mouth. The fear in her voice after the collector missiles hit. The bone-deep rumble of the collapsing ship. The whispers of air leaking from the ship. The alarms.

Even in an empty room, he can hear the screams.

* * *

Six months later they’ve still got him on desk duty on the citadel when he goes out for the first time to a crowded bar. He feels the pulse of the bass pounding out of shitty speakers and he drinks shitty beer and he wonders what part of this was worth surviving Alchera for.

Eight months later a friend in the alliance offers to set Kaidan up with a woman on the citadel, and Kaidan loses it and yells at him. He apologizes, later, and takes his friend to the shitty bar with the shitty sound system and the shitty beer, to make it up to him. He does not explain his outburst and his friend does not speak of women to Kaidan again.

A year and a half later another friend mentions another woman to Kaidan, who does not yell (out loud). His mind races and he reminds himself that his friend is only trying to be kind and he does not deserve anger, and neither of them deserve an apology beer at that terrible bar. Instead he says _I’ll think about it_ , careful and measured, and his friend says _I already gave her your contact information_ and there’s nothing he can do about it. They get dinner (no bars, no beer) and she is beautiful and funny and smart and _not Shepard_ and he does not see her a second time.

Two years after Alchera he is going on dates, first dates with men and women who are brave and interesting and interested in him and still they are not Shepard and he does not see them twice. But he is trying, _I’m trying,_ is what he tells his mother when she calls. There is a woman from the alliance who he meets for cocktails at a lounge that plays soft piano tunes, who asks him if he’s heard the rumors about Shepard. _You know_ , she says, _that she’s alive, and working for Cerberus_.

Kaidan laughs out loud right there among the sonatas and the gin and tonics.

He does not see the woman again (she had eyes like a rainstorm, she smiled easier than anything, and still she was not Shepard) and they part ways after only one drink, but he does not sleep that night. Because it was a crazy and impossible rumor, and if he knows anything about Shepard, the crazy and impossible stories about her are often true.


	3. Chapter 3

He sleeps fitfully for weeks, dreaming of collector ships over Alchera and the collapse of the Normandy. Even innocent dreams are disrupted when he notices, under everything, the nearby sound of oxygen leaking out of the ship, like some hissing viper perpetually behind him. When he wakes, he wonders how Shepard could survive that small apocalypse. If it could ever be possible that she is alive. He wonders, almost daily, how it could ever be possible that she is _alive_ and _working for Cerberus_ and it has been _two years_ and she has not come back to him yet.

He tells himself that each of these things is impossible. The Normandy went down, ashen pieces, and so she cannot be alive. Cerberus is against everything Shepard stands for, and so she cannot be working for them. And the way she said his name, in the nighttime but also in the mornings, and on the crew deck, and down the comm lines in the heat of battle, the way she said _be careful_ so often like a request but also a prayer, the way she held his hand when the headaches peaked and combed her fingers through his hair—

She cannot have survived without contacting him. Not for two years. Not for a moment.

* * *

Still the reapers are coming.

He knows this lurking enemy is on its way and he knows ( _I am certain_ , he tells himself, endlessly) that Shepard is not alive to fight them. Still an army will be needed when the day comes. And so he works his way through the alliance ranks, and it’s some kind of sickening pride when they crown him _commander_ , another reminder that Shepard is gone. But Shepard is gone and so now he must be the commander, because still the reapers are coming.

They send him to Horizon to investigate disappearances in the colonies. At least it’s more interesting than hunting down geth in empty solar systems.

The colonists are hostile and ungrateful, so all in all it’s not that different from his teenage years on Jump Zero. Only this time they call him _commander_ before they insult him, and this time he’s too empty inside to be upset about it. He wishes, often, that Shepard was here, that they could stew in their anger together in his quarters at night and rant about these colonists, _these piece of shit colonists who don’t even know what’s coming_. The collectors may not be the reapers but he still feels the urgent press of their imminence; he knows they are coming and while this is only one world and one slew of bitter colonists to save from extinction and not the whole galaxy, he knows he will have to be there when they come. He will stand with these thankless humans and he will do what he can to help them through whatever catastrophe is coming.

It’s what Shepard would do.

* * *

In retrospect, he experiences seeing Shepard on Horizon in pieces. The scars on her face. The Cerberus emblem on her shoulder. The Cerberus operatives at her side. The silence, as she stared at him, punctuated by the wails of the colonists left behind in the aftermath of the collectors. When he is alone and the world is quiet and he thinks back on the moment of turning a corner to find Shepard on Horizon, he remembers it as a very slow unveiling of someone he remembers and _loves_ only to realize, piece by piece, that small things are wrong, that there are big differences between this scarred woman in a Cerberus crew and his commander, and that the greatest difference is that this woman is _alive_.

In reality, in this moment, he turns the corner and the cognitive dissonance hits all in an instant. This woman is Shepard, and this woman is Cerberus, and this woman is _alive,_ and it has been two years. It has been two years and she is looking at him and saying _nothing_. When he thinks back, he wonders if there is anything she could have said right then that would have made that day end differently, if any apology in that moment could sound sweet enough on her lips that he would forget the sound of trumpets at her funeral.

He thinks about this day and this moment and this silence a great deal, after, but right now he can think about nothing at all. There are crying colonists behind him and the Cerberus operatives are looking at him like he’s just another obstacle and she is alive and spilling trite platitudes at his feet, but there was a loose blade in the ventilation fan in Anderson’s office when Kaidan found out Shepard was dead and how is he supposed to forget that sound? How is he supposed to forget the hiss of leaking air on the Normandy over Alchera and the sound of trumpets at her funeral? _How is he supposed to forget every day of the last two years?_

The anger burns hot in his lungs and he can imagine the heat of the flames on his skin when the Normandy went down _two years ago_. And Shepard is here in front of him after all of that, but she has not been here for _two years_ , and he loses himself in that rage and he is yelling at her and berating her for every moment she could have contacted him and told him she was alive.

At least she has the good sense not to argue with him, though even in his anger he can see the hurt in her eyes.

Though he remembers so much of this day in vivid detail (the yellow stitching on her Cerberus uniform, the freshness of the new scars on her face) he has the mercy of forgetting the extent of what he yells at Shepard. This is no new experience, her not saying enough and him saying entirely too much, and he is grateful to forget. Still he remembers her walking away from him, the rage receding in waves of regret, and remembers wondering if she still hums in the drop shuttle on her way back to the Normandy.

* * *

Time passes, and he tells himself the pain does too, but still there is a reaching ache in his chest when he gets the notification that she is calling him, months later. It’s late at night and he is not sleeping, woken by some ill-remembered dream. His message terminal is ringing and her name is across the screen and in that instant, the hurt and the anger he feels are as fresh as they were on Horizon. _Two years_ , he thinks, _two years and she’s working for Cerberus,_ the terminal keeps ringing, _two years and she’s working for Cerberus and after Horizon, after Horizon she would never call unless it was important_ \--

By the time he answers, his hands shaking on the buttons of the message terminal, she’s hung up. Kaidan is alone listening to a dead communication line.

He debates calling her back, wonders if she will try again, if she will send a written message instead. He pours a glass of whiskey to calm his nerves. One whiskey becomes two. Still there is no message and the terminal is silent. He wonders where she is right now, who she’s with, why she called and why she hung up, and half the bottle of whiskey is gone by the time he resolves to call her back, ask her _where_ and _why_ and _how could you do this_ and _what_ , more than anything, _what am I supposed to do next._

All these questions and yet he does not know what he would say to her if she answered. He wants so badly to be angry at her and yet he cannot bear the empty sound of her listening on the other end of the line. And so he does not call, not this time, only sinks deeper into his liquored numbness.

* * *

The ache is lingering in his brain the next day when the news channels start repeating Shepard’s name. They proclaim her victory at the collector base and wax poetic about the colonists she saved. They call Shepard a _hero_ as if the word weren’t stale after all these years. They talk about the Omega 4 Relay, about the risk, and they say the words _suicide mission_ on loop for hours.

_They could have never expected to survive,_ the news hosts are lusting over the danger of it all, and Kaidan can only think then that this must be why Shepard called last night. The timing is right for her to be in front of a message terminal just hours before traversing the relay to an unknown but certain threat.

All he can think about is what she would have said, had he answered.


	4. Chapter 4

Months go by and he does not call, but neither does she. He tries not to think about it beyond that. The news channels forget Shepard’s name. Humanity and the alliance are coming down from the high of the destroyed collector base, forgetting the collectors with the same ease they forgot the reapers. Kaidan’s message terminal can ring without his stomach sinking and his throat tightening. His mother calls and asks _how are you_ and he tells her about work. They’ve named him _major_ now, and his own separation from the title of _commander_ feels like further welcome distance between himself and Shepard.

Then they send him back to Earth for the briefest of missions and somehow, despite the size of the galaxy and the countless mass relays and ships to traverse it, he and Shepard are in the same room again.

She is kind and congratulates him on his promotion. They exchange small talk. They do not mention Cerberus or Horizon or that unanswered call months ago.

Her scars are faded and she’s in Alliance gear this time, not Cerberus, and even though it doesn’t feel like the old days on the Normandy SR-1 it doesn’t feel like Horizon, either. He tries not to think about it beyond that. She looks a little sad, but he tries not to think about it, and when she laughs a little to herself at the awkwardness of this moment he laughs with her ( _don’t think about it)_ and she may still be everything she was on Horizon but still she is Shepard ( _don’t think about it_ ) and talking to her even with these skirted subjects and unasked questions is easier than talking to anyone has been in months ( _don’t think about it_ ) or years, two years ( _don’t think about it)_ \--

They’re both finally smiling by the moment the first reaper strikes.

More missiles and more reapers follow and it feels like seconds before Vancouver is in smoke. People are shouting and buildings are falling and the air is suddenly hot with explosions. Anderson sends them running, Kaidan and Shepard together with her crew, for a ship off planet and a chance at a future for humanity.

Shepard says something about _old times_ as they’re gunning down enemies and sprinting for cover, but Kaidan could laugh at the novelty of it. It’s here, this moment he imagined for so long, the day the reapers come, the day Shepard would have to save. It’s been years since he imagined the two of them together on this day, and yet here they are, choking on the same smoky air.

They launch for Mars and the ship decks drip adrenaline. There’s too much energy and too much focus on the current threat for him to even think about Shepard. The awkwardness is gone. Instead, they’re bent over Alliance reports and galaxy maps and debating their next steps. She still listens for his input like she did in his days as a lieutenant. Behind them Earth is burning, Mars waits ahead with uncertain aid, but still the risk and the weight of this moment feels surmountable, here with his commander. Here with Shepard.

And then they land on Mars and she calls him not Major but _Kaidan,_ her voice soft on the comm radio in his ear. It’s a tone she hasn’t used with him in years, but more, it reminds him of all the times he imagined his name on her lips in those empty two years between Alchera and Horizon. It stings.

He shouts and they fight--not the gentle way they used to but with the bitterness of everything that happened on Horizon firing both their words--and her crew is watching and he does not want this, but still it’s happening. Shepard holsters her gun and pulls out her omni-tool, punches a few keys, and he hears her disconnect from the communication lines. She gestures at his omni-tool, indicating for him to do the same. He does.

She steps close and knocks her helmet against his, rattling him a little harder than necessary.

It’s an old secret they teach at the alliance bases. In space and on planets with thin atmospheres like Mars, the sound waves cannot travel without atmosphere to carry them, and an accidentally disconnected communication line is an emergency. In this situation the soldiers learn to stand close to each other and touch helmets, the air in their suits and the direct physical contact between them enough to carry their voices to each other. But in the bunks, the recruits learn that this close, hushed contact is also useful for private conversations, when something needs to be said without others overhearing.

He hears Shepard speaking, muffled and clipped, her helmet against his. It is the closest they’ve been in years, their foreheads nearly touching save for the metal between them, and yet he cannot see her face behind her tinted visor. She says _this isn’t about us, Major_. She says _we are here to stop the reapers_.

Then she steps away, before he can think of a response, and switches her communication lines back on. When Kaidan reconnects, he hears her giving orders again, plain and direct. He thinks _we are here to stop the reapers_ and he follows her in silence, providing cover fire for her and her team as they work their way across the surface of the planet.

It’s quiet and tense in the red air of Mars until the gunfire starts up again, a welcome distraction. He fights his way toward the Prothean archives, obeying Shepard’s orders because after everything she is still Shepard, losing himself in barked commands and the splitting heat of gunshots until a synthetic comes from behind and gets a hold of him. Its metal hands are grasping at him, clawing up his arms and shoulders to his throat, inhuman strength around his neck, Shepard is shouting down the comm lines, and then he’s slammed backward and his skull meets the wall, once, twice, forever until he can’t see or hear and even the pain fades into blackened silence.

* * *

There’s humming in the hospital room when he wakes. There’s a dim ache in his head surrounding a strange numbness, and the world is struggling to come into focus in the bright fluorescent lighting. His limbs feel like sandbags and he’s never been more thirsty in his life, but someone is humming in his hospital room, and his anxious heart slows to a calm thumping pulse. 

The blurring of his vision fades as he shifts against the pillows. The humming stops. She asks him, then, how he’s feeling, but her voice is strange. He blinks and finally he can see again and it is not Shepard, just a doctor humming while she punches numbers into a datapad at the foot of his bed.

He tells her he is thirsty. It hurts, his voice cracking.

She goes to fetch him a glass of water, leaving him alone in the room with the strange lightness in his head and a new heaviness in his chest, the realization that what he had woken wishing for more than anything was Shepard at his side again.


	5. Chapter 5

She visits him, later, after the days begin to feel discrete and the flow of doctors slows to a trickle. She sits at a distance with her spine straight, her hands clasped formally in her lap. In staccato tones she tells him about the reapers, the state of the world, the state of their mission. He asks questions and she gives him the few answers she has about what comes next.

His skull is healing where it split against the wall on Mars. It itches and aches, even under the pain medicine, and it is hard to think. After a time he falls silent. Shepard has had to say _I don’t know_ to his last three questions and she is quiet too.

She fidgets, a soft silken sound as her fingers interlock and come apart on repeat.

And then she says _Kaidan are you okay_ , fast before she can stop herself. She’s looking past his face at the bandages on the back of his head. Around them the history of the universe is coming to a close, and here she is worrying about his head again, as if it’s the first time it’s ever been in pain.

He laughs (briefly; it hurts). Brushes her off with assurances that it’s not the first time he’s had a headache, that the doctors say he’ll be fine, that his biotic implant is the only thing complicating recovery. He’s telling her too much again, but he can only think about the times when the headaches arose and she came to him, brought him to her bed and let him lay his aching skull against the softness of her bare stomach in silence, her fingers tracing circles on his neck and in his hair until the pain went away. He knows this kind of relief cannot happen again, not after Mars, not after Horizon, not after he disgorged every ounce of grief in his being and threw it back in her living face with cruel words and raised voice.

She waits for him to run out of things to say. Then she lays her hand on his forearm and says _I’m glad you’re okay_.

What can he say but a half-hearted _thanks_ , even as she stands to leave.

* * *

She comes back almost every other day. Most days there isn’t even news to share, but still she comes to his hospital room and sits with him. This day there is no news and she is sitting with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, tapping her heels on the tile floor, listening to the droning of the machines around his bed.

And she says _remember that first mission on Eden Prime?_

He says _yes_ , breathes a sigh, _I remember bringing you back to the Normandy in worse shape than I am now_ , _after the beacon._

_It’s a trend_ , she says, _but at least we’ve both survived this long_.

They both go silent, hearing her words, too late to take them back. A reminder that they have not both survived this long, not in his mind, not to him. A reminder of the pain of her imagined death, the pain of seeing her alive. She sees the way his face changes and realizes the comfort of this moment is gone, starts to apologize, _Kaidan, I’m--_

_No, it’s okay_ , he says. And then he says _I’m sorry about Horizon,_ because he is, months of regret heavy in him. He remembers the moments on Mars and leaving Earth before things soured, the feeling of being at her side again, and he’s starting to think that maybe having that comfort in his life again is worth the cost of remembering everything that’s happened between them.

So he talks about it, about how he’d like to move past the things he’s said and the grief of the last few years. She’s smiling at him and forgiving him and he may not deserve it but he’s taking it, and it’s only natural that he starts saying things he shouldn’t say, telling her about the lackluster dates he went on while she was gone (because _gone_ is still easier to say than _dead_ ) and then he’s saying _I still care_ and he realizes he does still care, very deeply, for her and for the way she looks at him when he’s rambling like this.

Visiting hours are over then and she has to leave, but she looks over her shoulder on the way out the door and smiles at him.

* * *

Udina visits next and asks to grant him Spectre status, and they both know there is only one other human spectre. _It’s like a joke_ , he thinks, this thought of him and his commander returning to equal status for the first time since Horizon. _It’s like a sign_.

But the reapers have come and how many other people have even fought them before? How many experienced leaders are enough? 

He tells Shepard about it on her next visit and she says _how could you say no_ , her eyes full of genuine pride for him. How could he ever say no. So he tells Udina _yes_ and the council makes it official before he even leaves the hospital. There is no ceremony.

* * *

Fresh out of the hospital they have him on bodyguard duty for the Council. It’s boring but his muscles still feel a little weak after his time in that hospital bed, and his biotics have been slow to return to their normal strength. So he does this job and he follows councilors from meeting to meeting, and then he goes back to another alliance-issued apartment and falls asleep in the narrow bed, feeling drained. In the morning he wakes late, showers quickly and skips breakfast for those extra twenty minutes of sleep, and then he goes to another humdrum day of watching the back of a man who doesn’t look at him twice.

Shepard ends the monotony when she meets them at the top of an elevator and points her gun in Udina’s face. She calls Udina _traitor_ and this is Kaidan’s job now, to protect this man, and it is on instinct that he raises his gun, Shepard in his sights, her blue eyes at the end of his barrel.

She does not look surprised.

Instead she argues, starts to make her case for her choices like those small debates they used to indulge in on the lower decks of the Normandy. She is not pleading or begging that he understand, only says _I know what this man has done_ , her gun still in the councilor’s face. Shepard has made mistakes before and more than once Kaidan has been the first one to tell her she is wrong, but this time he sees there is no doubt in her eyes. She is not asking his opinion. She is telling him why she is going to do what she is about to do. _Udina betrayed us_ , she says, inching her finger toward the trigger.

Shepard has made mistakes before, but so has Kaidan, and he’ll be damned if he makes another one now.

He takes his gun off Shepard and fires instead at Udina, the pristine presidium air fractured by the eruption of his gunshot. Udina hits the ground, the weighted sound of slack flesh and bone striking concrete. There is no sound then except for Kaidan’s breathing, fast now.

The elevator reopens behind them and C-Sec comes spilling out and of course Shepard was right, of course Udina had betrayed them. The security officers swarm over the body and Kaidan and Shepard are pushed aside, flotsam on the tide.

She catches his eye and asks _are you okay_.

_Yes,_ he says immediately, because after Cerberus it is incredible to remember that Shepard can make mistakes but often does not, that she will always try to do what’s _right_ without concern of consequences in her own life, that she will not flinch regardless of whose gun is leveled at her, and most of all that after his own tiny betrayal of pointing his gun in her face, she is still worried if he is okay. And if she can forgive him for his doubt in this moment, then surely she can forgive him for his doubt on Mars and on Horizon and the small betrayals he committed there.

_Yes, I’m okay,_ he says again, looking at the limp body of the councillor. _That piece of shit_ , he says, and Shepard laughs.

* * *

While no one doubts Udina deserved to die, there’s an unspoken hesitation among the council to bring Kaidan back to bodyguard duty. Either way, his strength is coming back, and he’s ready for something else. The reapers have come, and there’s better places for him than at the back of a politician.

That’s what he tells Shepard, when he asks to join her on the Normandy.


	6. Chapter 6

The ship is busier than it used to be.

In the old days there was less space on the Normandy but also there were fewer people. Even though the lower decks felt crowded with the noisy equipment and the heat of the engines, the noise there was at least the white noise of machinery. Now there are people everywhere, alliance soldiers he hasn’t met before (somehow they all look so _young_ ) and aliens who treat Shepard like family. Everywhere there is conversation, and even where the ship’s processes are loudest, someone is shouting to be heard.

He can’t find peace in the lower decks like he used to, but nothing is really like it used to be, anyway.

There’s an observation deck that sits in relative calm, mostly unvisited by the ship’s bustling crew. It is where he goes after missions now, staring out into the silence of space. He looks for Earth, or Mars, or Jump Zero, or that ridiculous coffin they launched off the citadel at Shepard’s funeral so long ago.

It’s not long before Shepard visits him there, in the aftermath of another mission. She stands beside him to look out at the stars, her arms wrapped tight around herself; it’s colder here on the perimeter of the ship than it ever was down by the engines. She asks him how he’s doing these days, and he says _I’m okay_ and means it, and she asks him about the last mission and what he would have done differently, and what they should do next.

It’s almost like the old days except he’s heard her having this same conversation with the others on the ship and he knows he is not special.

She runs out of questions and he runs out of answers, but still there are a million worlds out the window. The two of them stand in silence, so small in this universe, and just look. He can hear her trying to rub warmth into her upper arms, her fingers ruffling her sleeves.

Finally he says it, _Shepard, you died._ He turns to look at her and she is still staring at the stars, unable to look at him, her lips tight. Eventually, she nods once, quick and sharp. As always, she knows when it is her turn to listen.

_Shepard you were dead for two years_ , he says, _Anderson told me you were dead and there were trumpets at your funeral._ He’s not crying but there’s anger in his voice, a heated desire for her to understand, _there were trumpets at your funeral and two years went by with you dead and then you come out of nowhere in a Cerberus uniform and you never even thought to tell me you were alive? Don’t you know I--_

He can feel the sob rising in his throat and so he stops there. She is still looking out the window, waiting, giving him a chance to say more. When he does not, she finally speaks.

_I’m sorry,_ she says, and though her voice is quiet he can hear the remorse there. She turns to face him now and says again, _Kaidan, I’m so sorry._

He does not want to cry in front of her and so he only nods and turns away. She is sorry, and while that cannot erase the pain of his two years, at least she knows. She is alive and she knows that he spent two years grieving her, and she is sorry.

He feels her reach toward him and lay a gentle hand on his arm, a touch to console where words cannot. And then he hears her footsteps retreating across the empty room, and he is thankful that she leaves before the tears come.

* * *

He finds pieces of himself in his new life on this new Normandy.

The young alliance soldiers come to him for stories on the crew deck, asking about the historic missions. He tells them about Eden Prime, about Virmire, about Ilos. In the mess hall they ask him about the battle of the citadel and he acts out his part with silverware on the table. Garrus, walking past, stops to critique the position of the fifth fleet fork, and then Liara is debating whether they even knew at the time where the geth were coming from, and soon Shepard is brought into the hive of this conversation, reliving this shared glory among the clink of utensils.

Garrus brings Kaidan to poker nights with the new crewmen, Vega and Cortez, and they drink too much and play pathetic rounds of cards and take turns losing their credits to each other. Kaidan wakes the next day with an aching head and a dry throat and remembers what it is to have a hangover more painful than the night that ended in alcohol. Together the men nurse steaming coffees on the crew deck the morning after, alternately moaning about their own sorry state or laughing about some shared joke from the night before. Shepard comes down for breakfast and Kaidan pretends he does not see her staring as he pours another cup. It feels good to have her eyes on him again. He asks her if she wants any, and she says _what_ , and he says _coffee, do you want any coffee_ , and she stammers a curt _no thank you_ , and Kaidan tries to ignore Vega raising his eyebrows from across the room.

The early missions are fraught with tension. Shepard doesn’t even wait to get back to the Normandy to start asking for his input on what just happened and what comes next; instead she hosts debates on the drop shuttle as it rises from the surface of planet after planet. But the stress eases and their plan becomes more defined and one by one the crew starts to think they actually have a fighting chance. The mission comes when Shepard does not have to ask for input and instead she does not speak in the shuttle as it takes off. The atmosphere is choppy and the shuttle starts to shake, but even over the rattle of the equipment on the ship Kaidan can hear Shepard humming again.

His mother starts writing him every Tuesday now that he has consistent access to a message terminal; she tells him the smoke has died down in Vancouver and the alliance is so desperate for rations that they’ve started donating apples from their orchard. He tries to track the supply chains to find those Vancouver apples somewhere on the citadel or elsewhere in alliance space, and though he can’t find the apples he learns about a place on the citadel with real steak and real Canadian lager. He can’t remember the last time he enjoyed a meal. But these new missions on the Normandy are leaving him with sore muscles again, and he’s earned it, so he plans a trip next time they’re docked at the citadel.

He goes to poker that night and he’s feeling _good_ for once; he is here to stop the reapers and they have a plan that might even work and this crew feels almost as much like home as the old one did, years ago. He lets Vega talk him into doing a couple of shots in between rounds, because it’s nice to have nothing to drown in that buzz, and he’s drumming his hands on the deadening green felt of the card table when Shepard wanders in, looking for someone else.

She asks him how he’s doing, and maybe if he was sober he would care about the way she’s eying the alcohol blush in his cheeks. But he’s not, so he says _I’m good, Shepard,_ not okay but good this time, and then he’s saying too much again, he’s telling her about his day in fractured pieces, _my mom is giving our apples to the alliance and I found out about this place with steak_ , and finally he can look at her without thinking about her betrayal in being alive but instead thinking about the feeling of his own self being alive, finally alive in this moment. And he says _will you go with me, next time we’re on the citadel_ , because if he is alive and she is alive then he wants to share that steak with her, even after everything.

She agrees to go with him, and leaves them to their game. Vega teases Kaidan mercilessly for the rest of the night, but he doesn’t even care. His head is swimming with the alcohol; he feels weightless; he feels effortlessly alive.

* * *

He doesn’t wait long at the restaurant on the citadel before she arrives, looking both excited and concerned. It is the first time they’ve been alone since she apologized in the observation deck. She’s only just sitting down when she says _this isn’t about the steak, is it._

He laughs and tells her it is, actually. Tells her he’s been dreaming about this meal for days, and also she’s looking a little pale and maybe it’s anemia, _that happens sometimes, maybe you need this too_. She laughs and mumbles something snide about him worrying about her iron levels while they fight for their lives.

The waiter comes and Kaidan orders beer and whiskey with his steak; Shepard orders the same. She watches the waiter disappear across the quiet restaurant, and then asks if beer and whiskey are good for anemia.

Her hands are on the table, folded neatly, and he wants very badly to hold them, especially as she laughs again. It is so pleasant to be here, here in this place in the universe and in this moment, laughing with Shepard, with steak and beer and whiskey on the way. It is so sweet to be here in this life.

He takes her hand in his. She falls silent, but smiles just a little, and does not pull away. This is it, this is the closest they’ve been since Alchera, hand in hand, and he is acutely aware of it. Before the closest they’d been was her hand on his arm in the observation deck while he fought not to cry. He wonders what will come next.

This moment is sweet but they will have to go back to the Normandy and keep hunting down the reapers, and eventually they will find them. With all their tiny successes they are still playing a losing game, and this moment is sweet but soon it will end, and he does not want it to.

Though he had called her _traitor_ for Cerberus and for her secrecy in being alive, she is still Shepard and she hums in the drop shuttle and asks every single person on the crew for their input on the most minor of decisions, and she knows when to listen to him. And right now, she is listening. Around them the restaurant bustles, waiters treading quickly across the floor and the clink of silverware and plates punctuating the hum of conversation, but right now all he can hear is her silence.

This time he does not say too much.

_Shepard, I loved you,_ he says with her hand in his. _I still do._

This time she interrupts him.

_I love you too,_ she says, her hand still in his, and it sounds like fanfare, his racing heart drumming along.

* * *

They’re waiting for the citadel transport to arrive and carry them back to the docking bay. Side by side, they’re both still in the warm haze of good food and a little too much beer. Her hand is in his again, her head on his shoulder, and though the transport is running slow this evening neither of them minds the wait. The street is too loud for either of them to speak easily, so they don’t.

She tips up her chin and presses a small deliberate kiss to his cheekbone, and he is embarrassed to find himself blushing, here in the crowded street.

* * *

In her darkened cabin, they don’t speak. It is not Ilos and the world is not ending tomorrow. Instead he moves slow, rushing nothing, listens to the rhythm of her breathing. He takes the time to taste her, feel the racing pulse in her throat beneath his tongue, watch her skin blush heated red beneath his fingertips.

It is not Ilos and in the morning no one wakes them. Instead he wakes late to her stretching beside him, her hair a tangle and her eyes heavy-lidded. Later they will dress in armor and load their guns and face some impossible enemy, but right now the sheets are still warm, and he didn’t wait all those years to hurry through this small reunion.


	7. Chapter 7

Missions start to fail. It begins to seem to Kaidan that most days he returns to the Normandy to find a new empty space where a crewmate used to live. Shepard stops humming in the drop shuttles and stops asking what they could have done differently. It seems these days they have no choice but to watch their friends die, one after the other.

He finds her in the life support systems room after Thane’s death, sitting across the table from an empty chair. She’s staring, hard, at the place where Thane used to be. Her jaw is tight. In her lap, her hands are fists. Her spine is bowed, the weight of grief on her shoulders.

He stands there in this room--it seems so small now--and listens to the hitch of her unsteady breathing. The ship seems quieter every day. The door slides shut behind him and Shepard turns at the noise, her spine straightening, her hands unclenching, a feigned return to normalcy, before she notices it is only Kaidan coming in the door.

She looks at him with red-rimmed eyes and slouches back into her chair, again contorted by loss.

He comes into the room and the only other chair is Thane’s, so he kneels on the floor beside Shepard and wraps his hands around one of her fists, massaging her fingers straight. He says _I’m sorry_ , whispered to not break the sound of Thane’s silence, and he pulls her into his arms when she starts to cry.

* * *

It seems half a dozen times now the hope of the galaxy has hung on a single treasure. The beacon on Eden Prime, the relay on Ilos, the Prothean relic on Mars. Every time before they’ve set out with unbelievable odds and a small single goal and every time they’ve managed the impossible.

Maybe that’s why, even with the long odds and the panicked mission, it still is such a surprise when they reach for the Catalyst and fall short. It is a strange thing for this crew to fail; it is a stranger thing to not know what to do next.

When he slips into her quarters at night, now, she is not sleeping or even in bed. She paces, the cadence of her heels on the tile floor quick and erratic. There are illuminated screens and datapads on every surface and always she is scrolling through some file, looking for something someone missed. It’s never there. She’s working very hard to not slip into despair, forcing herself to feel nothing but determination. He instead is trapped in a strange numbness; it is not hope or desperation but only the sense that he has been through the end of the world and come out the other side before. He has seen Shepard die only to live again. He does not believe that they will survive this new apocalypse but also he does not have historical evidence to suggest they won’t, and that uncertainty only leads to a state of calmness, a knowledge that there is no knowing.

So he lures her from her datapads, night after night, sometimes with warm hands or chilled wine or even only reassuring words. He cannot solve this problem but it does no harm to distract her. The nights when they are together are loud again, now. They are seeking comedowns and releases here at the end of the world and time is running out; she breathes hot and moans his name beneath him, here in this new rapture, and they will not be pulled apart without leaving claw marks in each other's skin.

* * *

All too soon they are returning to Earth.

The ship is quiet, so much of the crew lost before this final battle. Outside the observation deck window, Earth hovers in silence, a fretful mother. The citadel, moved so close to Earth by the reapers, lurks distantly, this familiar sight suddenly so strange and reeling with an echo of betrayal. The reapers crowd Earth like scattered satellites, some entering the atmosphere and others lingering at a distance. Below, on the planet’s surface, explosions bloom and spread like infestations.

Kaidan stands in silence and watches the end of the world.

It’s growing closer now as they approach, set to land in London. Soon he knows he will feel earthen soil beneath his feet, that natural gravity lapping at him with every step, tugging him closer to the surface. He wonders if there will still be birds singing.

Shepard finds him, already stomping heavy steps under the weight of her armor. She slips her hand into his and watches the silent destruction approaching. 

* * *

Everywhere, the ground is shaking. They’re in and out of cover, sprinting across every inch of open ground they can gain, toward the conduit and a path to the citadel. Running feels ungainly, awkward, with the earth lurching beneath them. Buildings are crumbling and the air is as much dust and pulverized stone as it is smoke. Even here, on their home planet, the humans are switching on life support systems on their suits, desperate for a breath of filtered air.

The close sounds, the loud ones, are familiar; gunshots and tumbling bodies and Kaidan’s own racing heart in his ears. It has always been loud. It’s the quiet sounds, far away, that are unsettling. The faint screams. The reverberating pulse of reaper fire, deep and harsh. The world seems quieter after each distant reaper shot, and he realizes, after a series of them, that it’s the now-silent screams he’s listening for. That second of silence, before the next explosion, the next gunshot, the next tiny cataclysm, feels like being sick. It feels like a fever. It feels like the end of the world.

In the distance, a skyscraper falls sideways. Before the cloud of dust can begin to rise, an entire squad’s communication line goes silent. It’s a silence that echoes, somehow, as black smoke churns. It’s the first moment he realizes that they are going to die.

Shepard’s voice comes across his comm lines and he sees her turning back to look at him; she’s saying _keep moving_. So he does. They gain another few yards before another horde of enemies appears. He fires and reloads and fires and reloads and he’s going through more thermal clips than he ever has in his life. His pulse is so loud in his ears, like a crowbar to the skull, and he feels the ache starting, climbing from the base of his neck and running tendrils into his brain.

He thinks of Shepard, humming. He thinks of her voice saying _keep moving._ Her voice in the red waste of Mars, with her faceplate against his. _We are here to stop the reapers._

He keeps moving. 

He is here to stop the reapers.

* * *

The sky and earth are mixing into the grey of ash and desolation, and there is no horizon anymore when they catch a moment to breathe before the next onslaught. The bright red of Shepard’s armor is muddy and dull now under the layers of filth. His own armor is thick with it, the joints not moving as easily as they used to. It feels like being buried alive.

Shepard tells everyone to take a break. No one argues. They take their helmets off, breathing the polluted air, desperate for any breeze on their skin.

Kaidan’s knees and ankles feel weak from the ever-shaking earth beneath him, so he sits on the ground. He’s trying to wipe the sights of his gun clean (his gloves aren’t any cleaner) when Shepard sits beside him. Her hand comes to rest on his thigh. He holsters his gun, still hopelessly soiled, and laces his thick-gloved fingers through Shepard’s. He thumps her hand gently against his thigh, once, twice, feeling the weight of her, the gravity of her, the reality of this moment.

In the smoke, in the ash, while the world falls to pieces around them, she says _we’re going to make it, Kaidan._ There’s a strength in her voice he can’t have imagined.

He tries to stop thinking of ways to say goodbye.


	8. Chapter 8

In the end he does not say goodbye.

After hours or days or lifetimes they reach the conduit, splitting open the sky, reaching toward the citadel. They are running now, weakened limbs and ash-clotted armor forgotten in their desperation, the light of the conduit something tangible, some new single treasure to hang their hopes on, if they can just make it, just reach further this time--

And then Harbinger lands, a reaper aground, and the earth shakes apart. The ground is heaving, the vibration is so loud, still they are running, clumsy leaps across the rocking soil. The comm lines are really chattering now, everyone is shouting at once, Shepard is ahead of him running faster than he’s ever seen and she looks so _alive_ in this moment that he believes she can do it, they can make it, they will fight their way through the citadel and come out the other side alive and whole and finished with all of this, the smoke will clear and they will have a moment to rest--

And then Harbinger fires. The beam is instantaneous, fast as light. The heat is searing and the blast could flatten anything and the _sound_ is unbelievable. It’s splitting eardrums, bellowing roars, a sound that ends civilizations. It’s all he hears, even over the raised voices on the communication lines, even when the torrents of blazing air sweep him backwards and he is tumbling, his head striking ground.

He’s left deafened, momentarily, and the world is quiet as a grave when he tries to push himself to his feet and sees Shepard running toward him. There are blind spots in his helmet where blood streaks his faceplate, and she blinks in and out of sight, in and out of existence. In an instant, his hearing comes back, a sound like the world ripping apart, just in time to hear the drone of Harbinger’s ray preparing to fire again. His head is still swimming when he hears Shepard calling the Normandy, calling for an evac, and then she’s helping him to his feet and he realizes she’s trying to evacuate _him._

He says _not going to happen_ , he says _don’t leave me behind_ , he says a thousand words and none of them can convey his sheer desperation to be with her, on the citadel and after, to not have to relive those two years without her for the rest of his life.

She pushes him toward the Normandy and takes this second, this one second here in the panic of this devastation, and steps close to him and says only _I love you,_ clear and brazen on the public comm lines.

He tips his helmet against hers, hoping the contact between their faceplates can carry all the thoughts he cannot voice, the emotions there are no words for, the anguish within him.

In the end he does not say goodbye, he says _be careful_. The Normandy crew heaves him aboard and the ship engines come to life, churning faster and faster even as Harbinger fires again, as the ground explodes beneath them, as Shepard disappears into smoke at the base of the conduit.

* * *

He’s in the med bay when the shouting starts. Chakwas is bandaging a gash on his forehead when they hear raised voices, so loud it must be everyone onboard the ship. The doctor tapes down the last corner of gauze and then Kaidan is out of the med bay, across the deck, trying to pick out what has happened from the clamor of the crew. There’s been no communication with earth for the last hour and nobody knows where Shepard is, if she’s alive, if they’re only waiting for the reapers to finish the job.

Kaidan follows the sound to the observation deck, his formerly quiet sanctuary, to find engineers and techs pressed against the window wall-to-wall. They are shouting _the reapers_ , they are shouting _she did it_ , and finally Kaidan pushes his way to the window and looks. Below them the reapers are crumbling, something’s happened on the citadel to destroy them, and he watches as one by one they twinkle with flame and fade like dying stars.

Someone close to his ear is crying, elated, _Shepard must have made it to the citadel,_ someone is cheering her name, and Kaidan starts to think _this time, this time we did it_ \--

And then, the silent behemoth of the citadel shivers, fractures, _explodes_. Through the window he can see the air escaping, see the flames licking at every last drop of oxygen, see the arms of the citadel twisting and crumpling like the Reapers, like a dying thing. The crew around him falls into sickened silence. In his mind he hears the hiss of escaping air over Alchera years ago. In his mind he hears the trumpets.

* * *

In the aftermath, Hackett sends them to search the citadel wreckage for survivors. He tells them to expect none.

The atmosphere of the citadel has been purged by the many breaches in the exterior. The electronic systems are no longer functioning after hungry fires ate through all the generators. It’s dark inside, and empty, a ghost town, a sick nightmare version of a familiar world. They can’t move it from earth orbit while it sits in shattered pieces, and so instead the Normandy crew explores in the vacuum of space, treading heavy in magnetic boots through the charred skeleton of this place. The worst of the destruction is in the presidium tower. Kaidan goes there first, alone.

It is dark and it is silent and through the breaches in the exterior hull Kaidan can see the stars shining, so bright but illuminating nothing. This void of a space station. This coffin of a world. He wonders, climbing through the wreckage, ascending the tower in clumsy weightless bounds, if there will be anything of Shepard to put in a coffin, this time around.

While so much of his existence has been surrounded by explosions and gunfire and shouting, Kaidan’s life has been shaped by the silences in between. It’s fitting that he moves through this blackened corpse of a world in silence, here at the end of everything, without even air to witness. The beam of his flashlight roves over the darkened walls and cratered floors. Endlessly searching. He does not want to find Shepard’s body but he cannot bear another moment if he is not certain she is dead. He needs to know.

He reaches the presidium and thinks, in a moment of terror, that he’s walked out into open space. Panicked, he swings around, swiveling the flashlight in his hand, and realizes that he’s not seeing stars, that it is a million tiny fragments of broken glass suspended, weightless, catching and reflecting the light he holds. It looks like a dream. It feels like some cheap imitation of a lifetime ago, Sovereign crashing through the tower after the battle of the citadel, that moment of glass confetti and the sweet tinkling sound, the knowledge that they made it, that even as the sky fell he and Shepard had survived. What is survival but another chance to die.

He pushes forward, the glass pinging off his suit. It makes no sound.

There’s a twist of metal ahead and something red catches his beam of light. Red like Shepard’s armor, still dull from the dust of London. He moves closer, as fast as he can in heavy mag boots, and she’s there, it’s her, pinned where warped columns press against the walls.

She is not moving. She is trapped in the detritus and she is not moving and she’s been here for days, and he knows then.

He steps close and tips his helmet against hers, as gently as he can, wanting only to touch her as the ache of grief sets in. Wanting only to feel the reassuring firmness of her forehead against his, like the morning before Ilos. Like the second in London before he was evacuated and she disappeared. Like on Mars.

Like on Mars, when she pressed her faceplate to his and spoke so no one else could hear, the sound of her voice carried by their separate air and the kiss of their faceplates.

Kaidan holds his breath and _listens_.

Seconds go by. He wills his own heart to beat quieter. He listens, listens, listens.

He hears it then, softer than anything, the faint and resolute sound of Shepard _breathing_.

It’s so sudden he cries out, his whole body startles, and he leaps back and stands in shock and notices her shifting as she wakes from some unconsciousness. In an instant he’s shoving aside the debris that confines her, wrestling free wedged tile slabs and warped beams, and then he’s lifting her out. He reaches to pull her hand free and she grips him back, alive in this silence, and he’s pulling her back toward him, pressing their faceplates together again. In the vacuum she’s as light and weightless as his heart, her voice a weak whisper through the juncture of their helmets when she finally speaks, says _Kaidan,_ here in the wreckage after the end, _what should we do next_.


End file.
